Luogo e data di registrazione		Kirche, Séon (Svizzera) - 10-16 settembre 1976
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Engineer		Gerd Berg / Johann-Nikolaus Matthes
	Prima Edizione LP		EMI Electrola "Reflexe" - 1C 063-30 939 Q - (1 lp) - durata 49' 58" - (p) 1977 - Analogico (Quadraphonic)
	Prima Edizione CD		EMI "Classics" - CDM 7 63145 2 - (1 cd) - durata 49' 59" - (c) 1989 - ADD
	Edizione CD		EMI "Classics" - 8 26507 2 - (1 cd) - durata 49' 58" - (c) 2000 - ADD
	Note		-

The epoch of the perhaps most famous Spanish poet, Miguel de Cervantes, creator of the immortal Don Quixote, marked the cultural and political golden age of Spain. It was the era of the severe and austere Philipp II of Hapsburg (1556-1598), his religious wars in Europe and his struggle against heterodox people, especially against the Turks. And in the famous battle of Lepanto (1571) which guaranteed Spain the predominance in the Mediterranean area again, the poet and soldier Cervantes lost his left hand. In this epoch Spain replied to the religious controversies with the inquisition which rigorously had to watch over literature and faith. It was the same period in which the famous Spanish mystic literature of Santa Teresa de Jesus and San Juan de la Cruz was written out of deep religious belief. It was also the epoch in which Spain achieved her biggest territorial extension and in which the immense riches from oversea colonies streamed into the mother-country; but nevertheless beside wasteful luxury of a few and splendid ornaments of cathedrals and palaces greatest poverty was to be found not only in the lower classes of the population, but also among the representatives of the gentry who gained a scanty living because manual work was inconsistent with their class as we can clearly read it in the picaresque novels of this epoch. That was the official Spain of Cervantes which is obviously reflected in the construction of the Escorial, the synthesis of palace and cloister, situated in the barren highlands opposite Madrid, which Philipp II had founded and where he lived. But this rather harsh picture of Spain would be incomplete, if we forgot the other, cheerful and popular Spain with her manners and customs, dances and songs. Cervantes once said, “There is no Spanish woman who was not born to be a dancer“. (Gran Sultana, III) And in the second book of Don Quixote (II, 62) the poet gives us a clear idea of the passion for dancing of the ladies at court. They whirl round the knight until he sits down in the middle of the hall, exhausted and heaving the memorable sigh, “Fugite, partes adversae". The most popular figure-dances of the noble society were the almaña and the gallarda, which were rather stepped than danced, in strained grace to the sound of the instruments and the gentleman leading the lady by gloves or a handkerchief. In the popular art of dancing the vivid baile accompanied by castañuelas - castanets - dominated and displaced the solemn figurative danza more and more. Examples of purely popular dances are the caponia danced by a single person or the rastreado distinguished by a tearing rhythm and vivid gesticulations. The contemporaries of this epoch discussed a lot the dance which was the latest craze - the zarabanda whose “devilish sound” after Cervantes’s short novel El Celoso Extremeño was something new. According to other reports it is said to have been invented in 1588 by an ill-reputed Sevillan lady. The zarabanda mostly accompanied by amorous and satiric comic songs was in this way used for marriages and similar occasions. The castanets beside guitar, timbrel, tambourine or bagpipe were the most important accompanying instruments. For the danza de cascabeles little jingles were worn at the ankle joint. Other dances, e.g., the folìas danced by travelling students or the seguidillas and seranillas were accompanied by ditties called by the same name. Beside these dances countless names of other forms of dancing are transmitted and all have to be considered as popular spontaneous variations. And not only secular festivities were occasions for dancing but also every church festival. People even danced in the church in front of the altar. In this way the festival gets its festive and happy character. It is a matter of course, for example, that Cervantes’s Gitanilla (little gipsy) in the short novel of the same title, dances a villancicos religioso - a religious dancing song - in front of the picture of Holy Anne and castanets and tingles are sounding to it. And the countless processions being held in honour of the respective church-patrons on canonizations and beatifications, on transportations of relics or consecrations of monasteries and churches, especially every year on Corpus Christi Day, were not rarely interrupted by frantic dances, while mortars and fanfares accompanied the procession and liturgical singing alternated with instrumental music. Beside these dances presented by individual persons there are the group dances shown by guilds or also by professional dancers. The silk weavers danced the danza de los palillos in which they were carrying small rods adorned with coloured ribbons in their hands. In the danza del cordon each of sixteen dancers who had formed a circle was holding a coloured ribbon which was fastened to a rod in the centre decorated with flowers held by a seventeenth dancer. Furthermore there was the dance of swords - danza de las espadas - in which a sham fight was carried out. Fancy-dress dances were also popular and so national events such as the liberation from the Moorish domination were shown in choreographical representations. Last not least the allegorical dances with their didactic amusing character belong to the group dances. Beyond all doubt the Medieval Spanish art of dancing and during the era of the Habsburgs was influenced by Arabic customs and tradition, althought the knowledge of this matter leaves much to be desired. But England’s Morisco dances show how far Spanish - Moorish forms of dancing have advanced to the North. The Spanish comedia - the popular theatre of the golden age - had effective inserted dances, folk-dances were mainly used. In the opinion of some experts these folk-dances are even the centre of attraction regarding the Spanish stage. The noisiness and frenzy of these dances were actually the main reason for their being banned. But their abolition by way of trial, however, had nearly resulted in the ruin of the theatres. Finally the baile also developed from dancing parts of the comedia into an independent dramatic dancing play. It is a kind of interlude with words completely or partly sung. The dance cannot be separated from song and sound because folk-music in this epoch is nearly always either song or dance accompaniment. The guitar is the most popular home and folk instrument and the wealth of short-verse lyric poetry are set to music. Beside this, harp, mandolin, timbrel and bagpipe are most popular instruments. The contemporary composers, who were chapel singers or choirleaders or even chamber musicians at court, set to music the lyric poetry by famous and anonymous poets (Góngora, Lope de Vega, Quevedo or Figueroa e.g.) and in which way romances, seguidillas, novenas, sestines, canciones and décimas in short: the well-known comic songs and love songs were sung and played not only at court but also in middle-class families and in the streets describes a valuable song manuscript which a German prince took from Spain into his country. (The old song manuscript, composed between October 1624 and March 1625 by Claudio de la Sablonara for the Court Palatine and Duke Wolfgang Wilhelm von Neuburg, today in the Munich State Library.) The use of common dance-song forms in the literature of the epoch dating from the early 16th century shows us their increasing popularity. Cervantes in his short novel La Ilustre Fregona gives us a perfect example. Here a classical sonnet is accompanied by harp and vihuela, a professional musician sings a popular romance (the Spanish form of the ballade) and - a typical expression of song - a spontanuous form of dancing. Dance, song and sound form a unit in the popular as well as in the court music of the time, and if they are separated, it would be impossible to understand them adequately. Ursula Vences In the world hardly explored of the Spanish music of the 16th and 17th centuries, the extraordinary contribution which gives us Miguel de Cervantes is an unexhaustible source of references to the musical taste and life of the Spanish people. It is not only in Don Quixote, but also in the major part of his work that music constitutes an essential component (El Celoso Extremeño, La Gitanilla, La ilustre Fregona), whether as an additional element or with the intention of intensifiying the action (El Quijote, El rufiáno viudo, Persiles y Segismunda), or as an independant element of the action with a view to linking the different scenes (above all in the comedias and interludes). Cervantes takes music as a for the most part ennobling element; Many of his characters are musicians or in some way concerned with music. Let us quote the famous sentence Sancho Panza addresses to the duchess: “Madam, where you hear music, there cannot be any evil.” (2nd part, chap. XXXIV). Or Don Quixote’s remark: “I want you to know, Sancho, that all or nearly all knight-errants of bygone days were great poets and great musicians.” (1st part, chap. XXIII). Or Altisidora: “We will have to put down the lute for Don Quixote undoubtedly wants to make a music that cannot be bad since it comes from him.” (2nd part, chap. XLVI). So it becomes evident that also Don Quixote was a musician and perhaps he had also had a talent for extemporizing. As to the diversity of Cervante's style we must also emphasize the musicality of his vocabulary, above all as far as important things are concerned. So, for example, Don Quixote calls his horse by the name of Rocinante, “in his opinion a majestic and melodious name", and his lady is called Dulcinea del Toboso, “to his mind a musical and miraculous name". In all his works Cervantes gives us proof of his profound musical knowledge and, above all, his sympathetic musical understanding which comes to the fore in the fascination the human voice exerts upon him; we often find that it sounds like a “bewitching chant", there is often “a voice singing in such a wonderful and lovely harmony that it fills you with amazement and makes you listen till the end.” The best example is the character he created towards the end of his life: the singer Feliciana de la Voz, so called because she had "the best voice in the world" and astonished all her listeners when letting her voice take its course and singing.” Persiles y Segismunda (Vol. III, chap. IV and VI). Most interesting are also the descriptions Cervantes gives of the musical instruments and their combinations. These are the stringed and keyboard Instruments he mentions; rabel, guitar, vihuela, lute, harpsichord, psaltery, organ; wind instruments: flute, pifano, shawns (chirimia, albogue, dulzaina, churumbela), whistle, Pan pipe, gaita zamorana, trumpet, hunting-horns, trombone, bugle, trompeta bastarda, horns (cuerno, bocina, trompa de Paris); percussion instruments: tambourine, drummer, pandero, jingle, tamboril, castanets, cow-bells, ratchets etc.. The musical works mentioned by Cervantes give also a great deal of information about the musical taste of his time. As to the numerous romances he mentions, the romances del Conde Claros de Montalbán, Don Beltran concerning the famous battle of Roncesvalles and the Morisco romance Abindarráez y Jerifa are included in this recording. Romances of the latter type were very popular and, for this reason, suppressed (so for example the romance of the Morisco king who lost Alhama), to prevent the Morisco people from revolting. As to the villancicos and songs Cervantes mentions, Madre, la mia madre and Tres ánades, madre are sung here. As to the folk- and court-dances, Cervantes gives us a good description of those which were in fashion at the time, so, for example, folía, canarie, chacona, gallarda, jácara, moresca, seguidilla, villano, zarabanda, and perra mora. Perra mora is the name of a dance which had adopted the first words of its orginal text for all following variations. A variety of the villano (literally ‘country dance’) was also cultivated at court, as we may conclude from Cervantes’s works. The folía (literally ‘mad, wild dance’) as well as the zarabanda, seguidilla, and chacona had been very wild dances at his time, but grew to be rather slow and moderate in the course of the 17th century when becoming popular almost throughout Europe, with the exception of the seguidilla which was soon quite forgotten. Trying to give a general view of the fascinating diversity of the secular music during the time of Cervantes we have chosen pieces of great importance for this writer`s work, not only by reason of their musical quality and historical import, but also because of their evocative power and representative character. Concerning the performance of these pieces, we have also made allowance for the different historical, technical and stylistic elements typical of this period, a difficult task since this is a music which was cultivated more than three centuries ago. These are fundamental questions with regard to the fact that these romances, songs and dances are the expression of the soul of a people of bygone days, but as such a lasting expression which we today should be able to experience and to understand - not as a historical event, but as a reflexion and cristallization of a music having no like or equal. Jordi Savall
EMI Electrola "Reflexe"